SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Three years after Taliban agents arrested an Afghan-born American citizen and took him blindfolded into custody for interrogation, his wife, living in the Salinas Valley, is hopeful they’ll be reunited soon.
Zulhija Khan hasn’t seen or heard from her husband, Mahmood Habibi, as she lives in the small farming community of Soledad with their daughter and her parents.
Now Khan and her family are waiting anxiously for any news about closely guarded prisoner swap negotiations between U.S. officials and the Taliban government. Last week, Taliban officials announced that they had reached an agreement to trade detainees, CBS reported.
Though U.S. officials aren’t commenting, analysts and those with knowledge of the talks say they are certain to involve Habibi, who’d led Afghanistan’s civil aviation ministry before the Taliban toppled the U.S.-backed government and ended the longest war in American history. Though the Taliban denies ever arresting him, U.S. officials are unequivocal that Habibi is in their custody.
“We know that he is innocent and he would not do anything wrong which could bring his life or his family’s life at risk,” Khan, 33, said at her home on Tuesday. “The U.S. government should bring him back.”
The detention of Habibi, 37, has strained the already-fraught relationship between the U.S. and the Taliban, four years after its fighters retook Kabul in August 2021.
“The Taliban’s unwillingness to release Mr. Habibi has been a major obstacle to improving U.S.-Taliban relations,” said Lisa Curtis, a fellow at the Washington, D.C. think tank Center for a New American Security, a former high-level national security official in the first Trump administration and a former CIA senior analyst in Asia in the 1990s. “The Trump administration will likely remain adamant that any concessions to the Taliban will hinge on whether Habibi is released.”
Khan and Habibi’s family said the administration of President Donald Trump is pursuing his release more aggressively than his predecessor, Joe Biden. This year, Trump officials poised themselves to issue sanctions, released a multimillion-dollar reward for information about Habibi and flew to Kabul for negotiations. U.S. officials have successfully freed three other American prisoners from Taliban custody since January.
Trump is “very serious” about freeing Habibi, said his brother, Ahmad Habibi. “I am hopeful. And I hope that Mahmood is part of that prisoner swap.”
On Tuesday, Khan was still waiting for any news of the negotiations — the latest development in a three-year saga of worry and sadness.
“Obviously, she’s tremendously worried and very focused on trying to do the right thing and get him released,” said U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a San Jose Democrat. The Congresswoman met with Khan and other members of Habibi’s family and has taken steps to highlight the case in Washington.
Khan, originally from Pakistan, married Habibi in an arranged marriage and didn’t get to know him before their wedding day in 2019, as is local custom. Her eyes light up, recalling how he made her laugh and cared for their family.
The couple settled into a happy life in Kabul. Habibi worked for the U.S. embassy building out the nation’s airports and aviation infrastructure, and then he rose to the post of civil aviation minister. She worked as a general physician. Their lives veered off course when Taliban fighters captured Kabul. Remaining there was risky for Habibi because of his association with the U.S. government, said Ahmad, a former U.S. Army interpreter who now lives in New Jersey.
Like many from Afghanistan, Habibi and Khan had planned to relocate to the U.S. together after the fall of Kabul. By the following spring, the family had fled and landed at a massive U.S. air base in Qatar, then a major transit point for Afghan refugees.
Mahmood Habibi had already become a U.S. resident through the special visa program and then a citizen. He left behind Khan and their daughter to wait while authorities processed their visas. At that point, he was employed by Asia Consultancy Group, a branch of a Virginia-based telecommunications firm, and he returned to Afghanistan to continue his work.
He arrived in early August 2022. But days earlier, the U.S. had targeted and killed the leader of al-Qaida and architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks, who had taken refuge in a wealthy Kabul neighborhood. Taliban intelligence agents rounded up the firm’s employees, including Habibi, his brother said. According to reporting by Reuters, the CIA had hacked the firm’s security camera system to help carry out the strike, all unbeknownst to Habibi.
After arresting Habibi, Taliban intelligence agents told one bystander that he was a spy, according to a witness statement reviewed by Bay Area News Group. Ahmad is adamant that his brother was no intelligence asset for the U.S., just a civilian.
“I wish he was — he would not go back to Afghanistan,” Ahmad said. “He would know everything.”
Khan was forced to make the journey to the U.S. without him. She settled in Soledad and now lives in an apartment complex with her parents and her four-year-old daughter with Habibi, Hoorain.
With her husband in danger, Khan said she is too stressed to seriously study for the exams that would allow her to practice medicine in California. She has trouble focusing and sleeping. Every week, she and Ahmad speak with the FBI and State Department about any new information regarding Mahmood.
And Khan grapples with how she might explain to Hoorain the predicament her father is in.
“It’s heartbreaking for me to see her grow up without her father,” Khan said. “It’s affecting her emotionally.”
On Tuesday, as Hoorain played with a doll, Khan lamented how much Habibi had missed of their daughter’s life. She was nine months old when the Taliban rounded up her father and his colleagues. But Khan said she is recording every step of Hoorain’s growth.
“So when he returns,” she said, “he will be able to see all the time that he missed.”
© 2025 MediaNews Group, Inc.
Visit at mercurynews.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
